Tied the Knot

I got married finally. It seemed like a bit of a fiasco trying to make it happen, and at least two or three times I told Justin that it seemed like it might not be worth it. I was of course only sort of serious, but turns out that it was definitely worth it. I love being married to him, except for that part where we're both in the Army, and he had to leave to go back to Idaho for drill. It's a small sacrifice to pay to be with him. I'm very happy with my choice and I think did very well for myself. Here's one of the pictures from our wedding that the photographer sent me as a little preview that I really like:Since the wedding he's come back here with me to Monterey and we've been attempting to get our apartment assembled. It's actually going pretty well. We were able to purchase a couch off of craig's list from a guy name Jeffrey who sweated profusely dragging the thing up the stairs to our apartment, and as it turns out does full body tanning. I know this because Jeffrey didn't wear a belt that day, and that was a poor decision on his part. Since Jeffrey did deliver the couch for us, we paid part of the money up front and the rest upon delivery. I had concerns he might not show up, but Justin pointed out that he didn't seem bright enough to be much of a scam artist. Either way we now have a place for people to sit in our living room, which is such a little thing, but we are both really excited about it. And so it begins...already married life has driven me to thinking that used furniture off of Craig's list is exciting.

Defense Language Institute

At long last I completed my training at Ft. Huachuca and I am now holding under here in Monterey, California at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), waiting for my classes in Russian to start. So far I don't love it here. I have a LOT more freedom here than I ever had at Ft. Huachuca, but the barracks are worse than they were at basic training. I'm back to communal showers which is actually the part that I dislike the most. Fortunately for me, I am getting married next month, and Justin is going to save me from having to live here much longer. Had I known about these barracks in advance I probably would have begged him to marry me over Christmas exodus. Oh well, such is life. My classes don't start until March, so in the meantime I sit around and do nothing for hours on end every day, and daydream a lot in an effort to preserve my sanity.

A change of plans

I was going to get married in May, but Justin's tuition payments have fallen victim to the inefficiency of the Army. We've decided that rather than try and sort it all out and risk never being reimbursed for the money we'll have to front for tuition payments, to just call it for this semester. Now we're getting married on February 18th, President's day weekend, at the Mt. Timpanogas temple. It's still not terribly convenient timing, but that's the Army for you. We did however get to spend two weeks together over Christmas exodus. We spent a little time with my family at the beginning and end of exodus, and most of the inbetween on vacation with his family. I have included pictures here of us from the trip.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Justin. I like him a lot without his glasses, but unfortunately he's all but blind without them. The good news is that I still like him a lot with them too. This is him on a ferry boat on the Mississippi River.
This is a picture of us with his whole family at a restaurant in New Orleans where we had our Christmas eve dinner.

This is us in Dallas at the Grassy Knoll on the street where JFK was assassinated.

This is us at the zoo in Houston. He doesn't like this picture, because he says he doesn't know why I'm all slouched over and not smiling. Neither do I.

This is a look I get from him a lot, usually when I've just tried to get a little bossy. We were on a tour of a swamp in New Orleans.

This is again, not a spectacular picture of me, but it's one of my favorites of him so I decided to throw it in.

This is us on the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi.

This is also one of my favorites of us, at the Jefferson Davis house in Biloxi.

Engaged - May 26th

For those who may not already know, I got engaged to the man pictured above (we don't have any pictures of the two of us together yet, we'll get to that eventually). We met at Ft. Huachuca, on the temple trip I wrote about on here a few months back. So yes, it's been fast. Faster than either of us ever intended on moving. We've now become one of those annoying couples that say things like "well once you know it's right, why wait?" I never in a million years thought that I'd hear myself echoing those sentiments, particularly since I secretly regarded people who did say that as idiots. To make things worse, we met at AIT. Drill Sgts. started issuing warning about AIT relationships back in basic training. During the first briefing I attended at Ft. Huachuca an officer stood up and delivered a lengthy speech about not involving ourselves in romantic relationships at AIT. By all accounts they are distracting, lead to bad behavior, are costly, and are ultimately desitined for failure, and heaven help the stupid soldiers who go so far as to actually marry their significant other from AIT. Apparently I am an idiot, because I'm still convinced we're the exception, and that I met my one and only at AIT.

So a little bit about him...his name is Justin, he's enlisted in Idaho National Guard, and lives in Boise for the time being. He is a little bit younger than me so he's got some schooling ahead of him and he will start at USU in January. The good news is that this also means that I outrank him. (Although for the most part whenever I try to pull rank he blantantly disregards my authority over him. We'll work on making him a better soldier with more respect for his superiors.) He graduated from AIT a while back, and returned to Idaho, while I remain trapped in TRADOC. We periodically get to see each other on 4-days, but for the most part we're restricted to self-inflicted sleep deprivation from our evening/late night phone calls. (My roommate threatened to Nair my eyebrows off in my sleep if I don't start cutting the phone calls a little bit shorter, so that's something to consider going forward.) It sucks, but we make the best of it. I don't know what else to say about him, other than he puts up with me, and even professes to enjoy our limited time together.

On May 26th we'll be sealed in the Bountiful temple in Utah, over one of my 4-days and we will finally get to be together again. It's a pain in the neck trying to plan a wedding (I hate planning what to pack in my suitcase for vacation, and now I'm expected to plan a wedding from an Army base in nowhere Arizona...not going well at all...), but I can't wait for him to be my husband, so I'm determined to get this all figured out. With a LOT of assistance from the home front I'll make sure we pull this off, because he is the only man that makes me want to ditch the last minute vacations, live on a budget, answer to someone else, and basically just grow up and act like an adult.

Veteran's Day 2011

I have a four day this weekend for Veteran's day. My favorite cousin, Cousin Glen, drove my car down to Ft. Huachuca (all the way from Utah), so I can have it there for the remainder of my stay, and now we're catching a flight back to Utah for the long weekend. I was (and am) so excited to see Cousin Glen... he's the bestest... I'm glad to be going home as well, and wasn't at all sad to lock up all my gear yesterday. I won't have to put it all back on again until Tuesday morning, and I will not miss it at all. If you've never had the opportunity to wear full kit around all day, you're not missing much. It's heavy, makes me feel three times wider than I actually am, and the kevlar makes the bobby pins in my hair dig into my scalp. I won't miss it.

As is generally the case with these things we ran into a few complications along the way, like the fact that Glen brought a handgun, and then discovered at the airport parking place that the locks he bought don't fit the case. A few gas stations later we determined that the gun would have to be left behind in a safe place... under a rock off the side of the road by a special creosote bush. He says he will remember which one but I have my doubts. We then parked my car, and I'll have to figure out what to do with that item before I return to base on Monday. Pick it up or leave it under said rock. Then he had to surrender a leatherman to TSA when he got caught with one in his bag at the x-ray machine. Turns out they don't make nearly as big a fuss about that as they do about a loaded gun clip in your bag. Now we're shooting the breeze in the Phoenix airport waiting for the connecting flight that's going to take us back to the home state... all because I scheduled a 12 hour layover in Phoenix. I like spending Veterans day with my most favorite vet, even if it is just killing time in an airport.

Tell Me Lies

I would say that on the whole schooling here has been going pretty well. However, the Army is bound and determined to turn me into a liar, and in the words of one of my instructors "it's painful to watch you try and lie Black." I would say that the problem is just that I can't keep a straight face while I'm telling lies, but I've been corrected on this point and told that my lies are stupid and not very inventive. One of my instructors briefly made an attempt to resolve the issue by holding me captive at the company one Saturday evening until I could tell him one truth and one lie and he couldn't tell the difference. I was allowed to make one attempt every half hour. After I had made multiple failed attempts and my date that evening had text messaged me to say that he had proceeded to the movie without me and wished me luck in getting done in time for dinner, I finally had to resort to telling two truths and then lying to the sgt by telling him that he'd selected the wrong one. When I got back to the company that night he had put me on the next fireguard shift because he said that he could tell that I wasn't telling the truth about that either, so we would need to continue practicing. After a few more unsuccessful attempts and a lot of mocking I finally managed to distract him with an odd story from my flight back to Arizona after the Labor day 4-day pass wherein a weird private (from a polygamist family in Utah) who I had never met before wound up sleeping on my shoulder on the last flight, and then tried to makeout with me. It was all very strange, and pretty much left the sgt so shocked/amused that he forgot all about the lies. That being said, he will still periodically stop class and demand "Black, tell me a lie," and then laugh at my attempts at deception. It's not really about helping me learn to be a liar anymore, it's more like he's bored and needs a laugh. I'm okay with it. My favorite moment was when my own mother told me at the end of a phone conversation the other day "well just keep practicing telling lies and I'm sure you'll get better." ...words I never thought I would hear her speak. Some day I'm going to come up with a really great lie and no one will be able to tell the difference. Some day....

Cadences

I haven't updated this thing in a long time. In large part due to the fact that my instructors have made statements about blogs that have left me a tiny bit paranoid about incidentally sharing too much information online. Well there's that and the fact that I've only recently acquired access to the internet in the barracks. Either way, I'm over it now, I'll just watch what I say and carry on.

As I mentioned in a previous post, drill and ceremony hasn't exactly ever been my forte. Although I haven't really tried to improve in that area either. Marches are something that I just sort of endure, in large part because I hate cadences. I don't like marching around having everyone around me shouting and chanting, and I generally only participate when I feel like the sgts are watching, or when I'm at the front of the formation where my lack of participation would be more obvious. The rest of the time I march along in silence and try to pretend that all the noise around me isn't really there.

The other morning I got in formation to go to breakfast chow and fully intended to have yet another uneventful march up to the dfac. The sgt who is a self-proclaimed "angry Russian" all the sudden started shouting "Specialist Black, Post! You'll be marching us to chow this morning." For some idiotic reason it had never really occurred to me that this could happen someday, so I was caught completely off guard, and having been a non-participant in cadences as much as possible all I could say was "I don't know any cadences Sgt." I wouldn't say that really went over well. There was quite a bit of cursing and an order to "just do it," and after that a pathetic little attempt on my part, which was shut down rather abruptly and I was ordered to fall back into formation and told that I suck.

I thought that would be the end of it, but no. He hunted me down in line at the dfac and informed me that I would be prepared with 3 cadences the next day. So naturally I waited until a few minutes before bedcheck to contemplate addressing the issue, and then had someone write out all the lines to a cadence on a piece of paper for me. The next day at lunch chow we all lined up and I heard again "Specialist Black! Post!" I ran out to take the formation, and my sgt asked me if I was prepared. I told him that I was and then produced the piece of paper. Now, obviously I knew that there was no way, no how that he was going to be okay with me marching along reading cadence off of a piece of paper, but it was too funny an opportunity to pass up. I thought he was going to snap when he saw my paper. Instead all that came out was "BLACK! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!!! IS THIS A JOKE?! THAT'S HOW YOU PREPARE TO CALL CADENCE?!" Then there was more cursing while I tried to act all shocked like I couldn't believe that he was objecting to my preparations. He order me back into formation, told me again that I suck.

He did of course hunt me down in line at the dfac again and tell me in no uncertain terms that I will learn to call cadence. The same day at formation for dinner chow we're standing there and I hear again "Specialist Black! Post!" This time I came out to take formation and told him that I still didn't have any cadences since they didn't teach me any in class since lunch. I got barked at again and told to fall to the back of the formation...again. Then he started shouting at the rest of the company for not stepping up and teaching me a cadence. There was a lot more swearing involved, but I'm pretty sure he made his point. One of the privates came up to me in line and told me a couple of lines that I would just have to shout out that would launch the company off on a lengthy little cadence that didn't require much echoing.

That Sgt was gone all day the next day, and I had almost forgotten about it, and was feeling pretty safe when we lined up to go to an evening class, and all the sudden I hear "Specialist Black! Post!" By then the whole company was laughing when I ran out to take the formation. I actually did manage to call a few cadences and get them marched over to the battalion without screwing things up too bad. I have not been called upon again to call cadence, but I suspect that this might not be the last time I get called out. I hope the company is fond of those cadences.... because they're pretty much the only ones I know.